Uncovering Valve’s PC Gaming Platform
Valve revealed some juicy information on Team Fortress 2 this week at its information packed press briefing. 53 game updates in at this point the next class to receive its own achievements bundle will be the pyro class. In much the same way as the medic upgrade was rolled at last month, the hottest of the TF2 classes will see more intensives for people to choose the masked man(?).
Expect servers filled with fire in the months to come as we see another achievement rush.
[via PC Gamer UK]
Better late than never (finding a new HQ for SteamReport.com is time consuming).
Valve are allowing owners of Day of Defeat: Source to opt in to a new beta which brings to the game many of the Steamworks multiplayer and community enhancements found in Team Fortress 2. This includes 51 achievements, avatar display, stats tracking and the nemesis/revenge mechanic.
Not only that but the graphics engine is getting an overhaul to bring it up to the more modern Orange Box engine. Oh and they are even throwing in a new map called dod_Palermo!
I am blown away. As an old school DOD player I cannot wait to check out this new stuff that I don’t think anyone was expecting. It’s incredible that a free update this high in quality is made to a game that many people bought back in 2005. Of course this obviously means that Valve are willing to update their other games in the same way. Counter-Strike with achievements? It’s coming.
Another update for Team Fortress 2 has been released. The updates include the following changes:
- Fixed mat_queue_mode crash during level transitions
- Fixed rapid weapon switching allowing Medics to prevent deployed UberCharges from draining
- Improved prediction of Spy’s speed changes when disguising
- Fixed Stopwatch panel not updating if level designer ends round by hand instead of letting the gamerules end it
- Optimized particle traces on multi-core machines
- Fixed tracers sometimes firing with the wrong team color
- Fixed rapid-fire weaponry critical hit checks getting out of synch between the server and client
- Fixed map exploits in Gold Rush
I’m especially excited by any updates which improve performance on multi-core machines, since I still don’t feel like i’m getting the best out of my Quad Core Q6600, although I suspect that the noticable difference will be non-existant.
As usual, the new update will be installed on a restart of the Steam Client.
A couple of updates have been released today for both Team Fortress 2 and Audiosurf.
The Audiosurf update simply fixes a crash that could occur on song loading, where as the TF2 update fixes a number of bugs:
- Fixed several issues with the Family Practice achievement. Players with 10/10 progress that have not been awarded the achievement will get the achievement the next time they UberCharge any Steam friend
- Fixed toggle-fire option for the Medigun preventing players from earning the Second Opinion achievement
- Fixed The Kritzkrieg not charging faster than the Medigun
- Fixed issue that was preventing players from using their new Medic items on some servers
- Fixed melee weapons not being affected by The Kritzkrieg’s critboost
- Fixed Server Browser sometimes refreshing in the background on startup when it wasn’t visible
Valve are still ironing out the bugs on this one. Here is the changelist.
This really is a week of Team Fortress 2 news and updates. Another minor update has been released for the game with the following fixes:
Those taking advantage of the free Team Fortress 2 weekend will also gain the benefit of some minor TF2 updates. The updates are as follows:
Steam are offering Team Fortress 2 free for this weekend only. This is your ideal chance to try what is undoubtably a fantastic game that has recently been released separate from it’s Orange Box ’shackles’. You’ll get to trial the game in full, including the brand new Goldrush update.
Valve say:
A worldwide Team Fortress 2 Free Weekend is now under way! Join now, and play the full game for free, including the new content just released in the TF2: Gold Rush Update.
The Free Weekend is open to players around the world, and there is no obligation to purchase to participate; all that is needed is a Steam account to join.
To join in the fun and learn more about Team Fortress 2, please visit www.steamgames.com/goldrush
The Free Weekend ends Sunday, May 4th at 1pm PDT.
So, get Steam (if you havent already), download TF2, and lets see you online!
As I suspected earlier it hasn’t taken long for Valve to patch Team Fortress 2 and prevent the cheats from exploiting the console commands which allow you to unlock all achievements. Whether this will remove the acheivements already unlocked via this exploit has yet to be seen, but for now, all us honest players can breathe a sigh of relief.
Mere hours after the Gold Rush update has been released for Team Fortress 2, PC Gamer is reporting that cheating is already on overload due to a (soon to be patched?) console hole in Team Fortress 2.
It seems that Valve left a console code enabled which allows you to unlock all the acheivements, and therefore unlock all the new weapons available to Medics. I’m not going to reveal the code here, as I don’t approve, however a quick google will find you the answer if you’re that way inclined.
I’m sure this will be patched soon, but remember, next time you get killed by an Ubersaw, instead of shouting obscenities at the screen, you may only need to shout one word… “CHEAT”
